


It Has A Better Ring Than Goodbye

by Catchclaw



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Aftermath, Angst, Declarations Of Love, Derek's Camaro - Freeform, M/M, Schmoop, Season/Series 03, Unresolved Romantic Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-05
Updated: 2013-12-05
Packaged: 2018-01-03 14:14:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1071411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catchclaw/pseuds/Catchclaw
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How is it Stiles can feel homesick, exactly, for a place that he's never been?</p>
            </blockquote>





	It Has A Better Ring Than Goodbye

**Author's Note:**

> Set at the close of 3A.

She's parked two streets over, set just back from a street light, and she's as beautiful as Stiles remembers.

There's no doubt: it's Derek's Camaro.

He fits the key in the lock and climbs in, his jeans sliding over the leather. Inside, it's weirdly peaceful. 

He leans back in the seat and rolls his hands over the wheel. Just testing it out, tracing for the grooves of Derek's fingers. Because surely he's gone werewolf doing 70 and squeezed 10 and 2 a little too tight.

Nope. Nothing.

It's clean in there, too, all the floormats in place and the windshield unsullied by birds. She feels pristine, almost untouched, which Stiles knows is bullshit. This car's seen more action, supernatural and otherwise, than he ever has and yet, here she sits, on a quiet suburban street in a town frequented by what he had until recently regarded the stuff of black-and-white movies or a bad _X-Files_ episode, and yet there, behind the wheel of Derek's car, it feels like all the chaos of the world, the one made of alphas and druids only just vanquished, there's no way it could ever get Stiles. Not when he's wrapped up in the freaking Batmobile. When he's safe here inside Derek's car.

It feels like trespassing, sitting there in a space that's so not his, just resting, going nowhere like that. His hand drops to the gearshift, instinctive, and he lets himself wonder, just for a second, what she'd be like to drive, what it's like to control such a beast, but then he's holding paper, a note that's taped to the gearshift.

        _Take care of her_ , it says in block letters.

And then in smaller, faster scrawl: 

        _And yourself, too._

There's no question it's the same handwriting that graced the paper he found under his pillow. The same loopy _y_ 's and squashed-looking _e_ 's. 

There's no question now that both are from Derek.

He tugs out his phone and stares at the number again, the weird one he hadn't recognized. The one that sent him a text at 11:34 that PM, a message just four words long:

        _Look under your pillow._

He'd known the keyring right away, the snobby leather fob hooked to it that he'd mocked Derek for at least twice that he could remember. Hanging from it, there was only one key. It was speared through a note, one that listed an address two blocks over, set just back from a streetlight.

Most people, Stiles thinks, would have just rung the doorbell. Held a hand solemn and sober and said, like normal, "Goodbye."

Most people would not have waited, presumably, until the occupants of said house, so recently battered and bruised and, in his dad's case, made suddenly, terribly aware of the reality of the world in which he had chosen to live, were passed out on the couch after a whole afternoon of football, or basketball, or whatever the fuck they'd been showing on ESPN Classic all day. His dad loved that stuff--"Audio-visual comfort food," he called it--and they'd both needed to mainline comfort after everything that had happened, so they'd spent the day in the living room, eating fistfuls of his dad's speciality, Lime Jello popcorn, and arguing over the relative humiliation represented by old-school basketball shorts which were (argued Stiles) practically akin to on-the-court Speedos; or, in his dad's opinion, bygones of a lost great era when men weren't afraid to show a little leg if it made it easier to drive to the basket.

Right. So it must have been basketball.

Anyway, a normal person wouldn't have waited until those occupants were dozing, lulled by the sound of 1980s Marv Albert, to sneak into Stiles' bedroom. To leave a cryptic-y note and the key to said person's prize possession; one that he had, on more than one occasion, threatened to maim Stiles over when Stiles had slammed the door, quote unquote, "too hard."

Wouldn't have sent a semi-creepy text to lead to discovery of said note, one that guided Stiles on some midnight scavenger hunt in his own neighborhood, a place where surely someone would notice the Camaro on the street in the morning--hell, as soon as it was freaking light--and would probably call the cops and the car would get towed, scratching the rear bumper to hell and then Derek really would kill Stiles for beating up his baby if and when he ever got back.

When, he makes himself think, as loud as he can. When.

The word echoes in his head and something in Stiles goes sideways, rears back and widens its eyes, because how can he feel homesick, exactly, for a place that he's never been?

Maybe it's because he's sitting in the one space, the one place, that's all Derek's own, to which he's just granted Stiles the key, but what the hell does that even mean? There's no way to be sure, because conveniently, of fucking course, Derek's not there, has run off with Cora somewhere to be safe or to brood or to write the Great American Novel, whatever, key point, he's vanished, vamoosed, so there's no way for Stiles to know how he's supposed to be feeling, how he should read this, if it's ok that his tears are getting lost in black leather, that he's pounding the wheel with his fists and not saying a goddamn word, a half-swallowed groan in his throat, swimming in more anger than grief because Derek, only Derek, would do something so wordless and seemingly sweet and smeared with like eight layers of meaning after two fucking years, finally, but only on his way out of town, to destinations out there, incommunicado, and leave Stiles alone in the lurch.

The phone's right there in his hands, and he types fast, furious, and hits send before he can think better:

Two words:

        _You coward_.

He twists the key too hard, too fast, and squeals her out into the street.

The whole neighborhood is silent, shut up tight against the night. There are a few porch lights on, waiting patiently for somebody to pull into the driveway, to shut off the ignition and climb out, check the locks twice, and then come on into the house, up the stairs and under the covers to cover a sleepy heavy mouth with his own. 

He grits his teeth and makes a right because no, they're just lights, stupid ways of making people feel safe, of making them feel like there's any way to resist the darkness and all the evils of the world behind, and Stiles thinks that even they knew about werewolves and magic, about the kind of monsters that don't even have names, they'd still do the same, still be convinced that one little bulb could make all the difference, one blink in all of that black.

He shivers and the car hums under his hands; like a horse, he thinks, trying to soothe him, nickering or whatever horses do and nudging at his shoulder with her snout, breathing in, breathing out: it's ok. it's ok.

_Breathe_ , she tells him. _Stiles. It's ok_.

He turns around at the McDonalds and makes a long loop back to his street, giving her some room to run. Room, sure, and time, so much that it's midnight plus when he finally turns into his driveway, locks the doors and tiptoes inside. 

Inside, where his dad's still passed out on the couch, his snores lit up by young Larry Bird sprinting up and down the court some thirty years in the past.

At the edge of his bed, Stiles breathes in again, out and in, and damn if the smell of the car, of leatherwork and Armor All and Drakkar Noir, hasn't snaked around his shoulders and made a knot, one that squeezes his trachea and winds down somehow to his heart. 

Fuck.

When he gets out of the shower, it's cold in his room, fucking freezing, and it takes him a minute, once he's stomped into his pajamas, before he figures out why.

His window's open. And not a crack, either; the fucker's flung gaping and wide.

His heart jumps because it's a moron, a big romantic fool, and just to spite it, he flips on the light.

Take that, you dumb fuck, he thinks. Room's empty. He's all alone.

He locks the damn window, double checks this time to make sure, and bangs his way into bed, breathing in, breathing out, and, oh, there's a note on his pillow, one that sticks to his cheek as he shoots up and fumbles for the lamp.

        _Yes_ , it says, in that scrawly crap cursive. _I am. But you're not. That's why I love you_.

Then in letters less hesitant, in something stable and sure:

        _See you soon_.

He falls asleep with the thing in his fist.

In the morning, it's wrinkled as hell, that note, still rolled up in his fingers, the Camaro's still there, wicked and beautiful in the driveway, and Derek's still gone.

Stiles tapes the note next to his keyboard so he'll see the words everyday, so that one day, maybe he can even believe them:

_See you soon_.


End file.
